Smarter than SMART: How therapists can improve goal-setting with clients

Curt and Katie chat about setting goals. We look at why goals are important to therapists, SMART goals (what they are, what works and what doesn’t), and how to move beyond SMART goals to more robust goal setting and behavior design. This is a continuing education podcourse.

Transcripts for this episode will be available at mtsgpodcast.com!

In this podcast episode we talk about how to strengthen your goal-setting skills

We're looking at SMART goals and how to make them better. AND Katie helps Curt with his goal setting!

Why is goal-setting important to therapists?

Therapeutic benefit, Ethical responsibility, Ability to achieve goals

What are SMART Goals? Do they work?

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timebound; The benefits of effort or progress goals versus outcome goals, May need to add steps to create a more robust plan

How can you improve SMART goals?

Using the Grip on Life model, Digging deeper into the elements of SMART goals, Finding life skills that help to reach the goal

What is the key difference between setting goals and behavior design?

Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, Motivation is fickle, Finding the smallest behavior change that can move you toward the goal, Create a habit, put it into something you’re already doing, and celebrate the accomplishment

Receive Continuing Education for this Episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide

Once you’ve listened to this episode, to get CE credit you just need to go to learn.moderntherapistcommunity.com/pages/podcourse, register for your free profile, purchase this course, pass the post-test, and complete the evaluation! Once that’s all completed - you’ll get a CE certificate in your profile or you can download it for your records. For our current list of CE approvals, check out moderntherapistcommunity.com.

Continuing Education Approvals:

When we are airing this podcast episode, we have the following CE approval. Please check back as we add other approval bodies: Continuing Education Information

CAMFT CEPA: Therapy Reimagined is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LPCCs, LCSWs, and LEPs (CAMFT CEPA provider #132270). Therapy Reimagined maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Courses meet the qualifications for the listed hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. We are working on additional provider approvals, but solely are able to provide CAMFT CEs at this time. Please check with your licensing body to ensure that they will accept this as an equivalent learning credit.

Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links.

Tiny Habits: The small changes that change everything by BJ Fogg, PhD

References mentioned in this continuing education podcast:

Bertelsen, P. & Ozer, S. (2021). Grip on life as a possible antecedent for self-control beliefs interacts with well-being and perceived stress. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 62, 185–192.

Fogg, B. J. (2020). Tiny habits: the small changes that change everything. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

*The full reference list can be found in the course on our learning platform.

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Thriving Over Surviving – Growing a Practice Without Burnout: An interview with Megan Gunnell, LMSW

Why You Shouldn’t Just Do It All Yourself: An interview with Bibi Goldstein

Therapy for Executives and Emerging Leaders